Airports: which are the best connected hubs?

The Official Airline Guide (OAG), the world’s leading authority on air service information, has released its 2019 ranking of the most connected airports.

The ranking is based on the Connectivity Index, which is generated by comparing the number of scheduled connections to and from international flights with the number of destinations served by the airport.

We are therefore talking about ranking airports according to their connectivity and not their overall traffic or connecting traffic, which are other ways of ranking hubs.

Which are the 10 best connected airports in the world?

The two leaders are London Heathrow and Frankfurt, two European airports, hubs respectively of British Airways and Lufthansa. It is worth noting that the German airline operates 63% of its flights in Frankfurt, while its British counterpart only operates 51% of its flights from its own hub, proof that it is subject to greater competition there.

In third place is Chicago O’Hare, United’s hub and the best connected airport in the United States.

4 European airports in the top 5!

More surprising are the presence of Amsterdam and Munich, in 4th and 5th place respectively: proof that they are more transit airports than destination airports. 4 European airports in the top 5 is still a surprise. But there is a reason for this: compared to the United States and Asia, traffic in Europe is essentially international, and the distances involved make it easy to cover most domestic needs by train.

It should be noted that Roissy is ahead of Atlanta, the gigantic Delta hub.

The last surprising figure is that Singapore Airlines only accounts for 24% of flights at Changi, proving that it is a very competitive destination!

Further on, we note that Istanbul, the hub of Turkish Airlines, the airline that serves the most countries in the world, is only 17th and Dubai, the hub of the powerful Emirates, only 24th!

For the record, the European ranking:

The same ranking is also available for low-costs. Not surprisingly, the ranking is dominated by Asian airports and Barcelona is the highest ranked European airport in this segment.